Author: Daniel Gallen

This talk will discuss the development of the annual Fleadh Cheoil na hÉireannin the 1950s, with particular emphasis on when the Fleadh came to Loughrea, CountyGalway in 1955 and the subsequent year 1956, when it was hosted in neighbouringCounty Clare, in Ennis. The Fleadh was first established by Comhaltas Ceoltóirí Éireann(CCÉ) in 1951, when the inaugural festival was held in Mullingar. That first Fleadh wasthe initial action of CCÉ, the nascent music revival organisation, itself as yet unnamed.Over the course of the 1950s, the annual Fleadh (and the developing structures ofcounty and provincial Fleadh) became the most important calendar event for the Irishtraditional music community of practice. In the 1950s, Loughrea and Ennis as locationswere key building blocks in Fleadh growth, but were not without tensions which spilledover into the performance space.  The Fleadh remains central to Irish traditional musicculture, now attracting over half a million people annually, however, it is these earlyfestivals which created many of the structures and patterns of festivalisation that arecentral the contemporary Fleadh model. Dr Méabh Ní Fhuartháin (Head of Irish Studies, Centre for Irish Studies, University ofGalway) lectures and researches in the field of Irish music and dance studies. Widelypublished, Méabh’s current research projects… Read the rest

Cover of “Queen of Codes: The Secret Life of Emily Anderson, Britain’s Greatest Female Code Breaker” Galway woman Emily Anderson may have appeared to the world as the epitome of ordinary,yet was in truth anything but. Born in 1891 as the daughter of the President of Queen’sCollege Galway, during World War I she was recruited to British intelligence to work as acodebreaker. So exceptional were her skills that she was one of the few women retained towork in intelligence during the interwar period, and subsequently served as a codebreaker atBletchley Park and later Cairo, winning an OBE in the process. Though widelyacknowledged as an exceptional musicologist – her translations of the Letters of Mozart andthe Letters of Beethoven are classics to this day – her professional life as Britain’s greatestfemale codebreaker remained secret until the recent publication of her biography by JackieUí Chionna. In this lecture Dr. Uí Chionna will recall the remarkable life of the woman whoearned herself the title “Queen of Codes”. Dr. Jackie Uí Chionna teaches History at the University of Galway. Her biography of EmilyAnderson, Queen of Codes: The Secret Life of Emily Anderson, Britain’s Greatest FemaleCodebreaker, was published by Headline UK in 2023. Her previous… Read the rest